The First Shoot of the Summer

Rachael (designer), Gabby (model), Becca (photo assistant) and I traveled to Swinderby for the first shoot of the summer. I was lucky enough to have friends with a lake to use for the first garment. The idea for this shoot was to make the model appear as if she was walking on water. To do this I built a small platform of bricks and pallets in the lake about ten feet out from the shore just under the surface of the water for the model to stand on.

We waited until about 8:00 pm for the sun to start setting and colour to come into the sky. We ran into a couple lighting issues with one bulb blowing out, another fuse frying and another who would only pop every 4 or 5 times so we revamped the lighting situation to a much simpler speedlite setup with Becca becoming a lighting stand in three feet of water.

To get the desired effect and not notice the platform just under the surface, I had to submerge into the water with the camera as close to the water's surface as possible (the Hasselblad was unable to do this so I scrapped it and switched to the Canon 5D Mark II). The low angle put the horizon just between the model's ankles and knees to give us a huge amount of sky in the image.